closely to prove out of the Holy Scriptures the wickedness and abomination of our Liturgy and Ceremonies And though you are here wont to rowl up and down in rambling and uncertain talk yet still the last resolution of all your Impertinency as you have been told often enough is the great Mystery of unscriptural i. e. symbolical Ceremonies for excepting these all of you allow the lawfulness of all other unscriptural Ceremonies and here after you have done your poor utmost at sending and thrusting are you forced to shelter both your Self and your Cause and at last your Quarel against them is That they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but Divine Institution that is to say they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but a Sacramental Nature But the grievance it seems is that these Humane Institutions should be made of equal force to Divine Institutions in that they are imposed with so high a penalty But what is that to you or me if our Governours should be over-severe in their making of Laws as long as they thereby enact and enforce nothing that is in it self unlawfull Beside that this is such an Objection as may be equally thrown against all Laws whatsoever in that they are all establisht upon their proper Penalties so that if it once pass there will be no Remedy left to prevent mad people from playing the Apes and Baboons in the worship as you have done the Wolves and Tygers in the Cause of God in that to restrain them by penalties and yet there is no other way of doing it will be to make Humane Institutions of equal force with the Divine But here lurks the great mischief of all your peevishness as you have been too often inform'd seeing you will not attend that your complaints are so impossible to be redrest that though we would save you from persecution yet it is not in our power to do you so much kindness in that Divine Worship cannot possibly be performed without some Arbitrary and unscriptural Ceremonies And make choice of what others you please refine and purifie them as long as you will they will still retain their symbolical Nature And then as it is necessary to the nature of external Worship to express it self by symbolical Ceremonies so is it as necessary to prevent madness and confusion that some particular Rites be determin'd and injoyn'd by Authority otherwise after what a ridiculous rate must the publique Service of God be every where perform'd when every humorous and conceited Fellow would be at Liberty to affect his own singular posture and extravagance And for this reason all Churches in the world have ever taken upon them to determine their own rules of Order and Decency and exacted Conformity to them of all the members of their own Communion And so do all the particular Clans and Conventions of the Fanatiques among themselves and without this uniformity all their Assemblies would be no better than a wild and confused rabble of people For do but suppose a mixt Assembly partly of a Congregation of Presbyterians and partly of a meeting of Quakers what an uncouth and fantastick medley would this appear to the Spectators when upon the very same Principle that the Presbyterian refuses to kneel at the Communion the Quaker refuses to be uncover'd and so still they would quarrel and combate each other as much as they do the Church This is so plain and obvious to every mans experience and they have been so often upbraided with it that no man whose confidence had not devoured his understanding could have taunted us so perpetually as you do with the indifferency of our Ceremonies in their own Natures when it is so plain that the determination of some indifferent things is absolutely necessary to the exteriour performance of Gods worship and when it is so certain that this exception if once admitted would fall as fouly upon all your several Customes as upon our Constitutions So that the Quarrel relates not so much to the particular matters in controversie between us for no man is or ever was so fond as to pretend an antecedent necessity for their particular injunction it is enough for us and too much for you that it is absolutely necessary to enjoyn either these or some other symbols as unscriptural and arbitrary as these But our main concern relates to that dangerous and exorbitant Principle upon which your Dissent and Non-conformity is founded A principle so fond and so mischievous that it will not suffer the settlement of any Church or Common-wealth in the world So little reason have you to complain of the severity of the Laws whilst the Laws are only level'd against such Principles as must eternally oblige you to be seditious and unpeaceable under all Governments and in all Churches insomuch that should his Majesty condescend to grant you a Commission to order Divine Service to your own humours if you would but be constant to the peevishness of your own Prinoiples that would bring you under as indispensable an Obligation of Non-conformity to your own Constitutions as you now pretend to lie under to ours So that you see the last Issue of this Plea is plainly nor more nor less than this that you are persecuted for your Conscience sake i. e. only because you are resolved to keep your selves under a necessity of being persecuted And this I hope at present may suffice to stop your Cry of Persecution but if this will not do then there is no remedy but I must muzle you and your whole party and that I hope to do to the purpose when I come to your State-Policy In the mean while it concerns Authority to consider whether as simply as your pretences look at top any thing but the Good Old Cause or as you mince it the Cause too good be lurking at the bottom whilst they observe such blessed Saints as you that are known to boggle at nothing your selves and withall to be the fiercest and most vehement enemies to the present form of Government to be the only men that come forth to Witness against Prelacy and Antichrist and preach such silly scruples to the Rabble as you know must be unremoveable grounds of discontent between the King and his People For as much as your general pretence viz. that if His Majesty shall ever challenge any Authority over Conscience he invades the Divine Prerogative which yet you know and sometimes acknowledge to be false destroys all Government in general in that Princes have no other secure and fast hold upon their Subjects but only by vertue of their Consciences and then as for all your particular exceptions they as apparently destroy all Church-Government in particular and are so remediless that it is not in the Power of Princes to avoid them as long as they will leave any outward appearance of Religion or Divine Worship in the World For if they will admit of any more Rites than the two Sacraments it must be
Friend and Foe and eating up All Men Women and Children He that came off with Honour in threescore and seventeen Duels before he was one and twenty and in forty years more by Land and Sea fought as many pitcht Battels could not have made a more war-like sound Certainly you go as I have read of one in the 5 Epist. to Marcellinus for why should not I read your Fathers as well as you read mine always hung like a Justice of Peace's Hall with Pikes Halberts Peitronels Callivers and Muskets And if you could but victual your self for half a year in your Breeches it is not to be doubted but you would be able to over-run whole Countries Hungary Transylvania Bohemia and all the other territories of modern Orthodoxy The first Argument I made use of to remove all popular suspicions of Popery from the Government was the manifest inconvenience to the State that must arise from any alteration in the Church and this I proved from those impregnable principles of Loyalty that are peculiar to our Communion from all other Dissenters so that all design of Change being so manifestly imprudent and impolitick I thought it too wild a surmise for the Wisdome of the Government unless it were not only trinkled but bewitch'd to expose it self and therefore that there could be no other probable ground of danger but from the restlesness and seditious practices of the Fanatique Party that might possibly some time or other make way for the return of Popery by making disturbances in Church and State And to this purpose I gave a large Character of the peculiar Genius and the distinguishing principles of the Church of England from the Gibelline Faction But it seems you do not like my Characters and what is that to me am I obliged to justifie them because such Jack-Gentlemen as you do not approve them If you have any thing to except you know the Law and the Press is open but your bare dislike will no where pass for a confutation And to tell us that you find on either side only the natural effect of such Hyberbole's and Oratory that is not to be believed is in a great many words only to say I lye It may be so but yet that satisfies no body And yet tell me can you deny the Loyalty of the Church of England both in its principles and practices if you cannot whatever I have said in her commendation is undeniably true and then it is you that lease Can you deny that the regular Clergy are the most zealous Assertours of the Rights of Princes and that they and only they teach subjection to be an indispensable duty of Religion without false reserves and limitations Can you deny that those Subjects that stuck to the Communion of the Church of England ever stuck to hazard Lives and Fortunes out of devotion to their Prince Can you prove that every any forsook the Royal Cause in its greatest distress that did not first forsake the Church of England Can you deny that the main Article that distinguishes ours from all other Communions is that we vest the Crown in an Ecclesiastical Supremacy which is one half of the Sovereign Power whilst they challenge it either to themselves or some foreign Jurisdiction that has no more ground of Claim beside bare confidence to exercise any Authority in the Kings Dominions than the King has in his These are the Elogies I gave to the Church of England If they are such Hyperboles as are not to be believed that is to say if they are lyes make it good or else confess your impudence to call them so not only without proof or evidence but against Experience and Demonstration And so for my contrary Character of the Fanatiques that too is all a lye or such an Hyperbole as is not to be believed and so I am answer'd but if that be all you have to say I am very well satisfied too You had done them some kindness if you had undertaken to prove either that the Preachers never taught the people Aphorisms of Disloyalty and Rebellion or that they were never engaged in actual War against their lawful Prince by their Instigation or that any of them have renounced their old Principles though they could never be prevail'd with so much as to acknowledge their Crime either to God or the King These are plain Cases of Conscience so that till they have done this if they were ever guilty they are so still And therefore when you only tell us that I have dress'd them all up in Sambenita 's painted with all the Flames and Devils in Hell All the service you do your brethren is to inform the World that whoever will draw a Fanatique to the life must get the Devil to sit for his picture and if a man cannot describe them without dressing them up in Sambenita's I cannot help that this I am sure of that I have not made one false stroke or ill feature that I cannot justifie to any Artist I am not concern'd how ugly the piece is so it be but like and yet you your self have not been able to tell me one fault that I have committed I am only sorry that they are so very deformed as you have represented them for I never suspected before you informed me either that they were so bad or the Devil so good But I know what it is that so much girds you though your guilty Conscience dares not touch it viz. that I have there proved that nothing but the Good Old Cause lyes at the bottom of all your present Schism and that the most zealous Patriots of Conventicles are such as have given the World but very little ground to suspect them from their profess'd Principles or open Practices of the least tenderness of Religion and kindness to Monarchy so that nothing better can ever be expected from them than factions and republican Designs I know this twinges to the quick it is so observable all the Kingdome over that as you cannot endure to hear it so you dare not deny it And now your appearance has amply verified the truth of the Observation When at the same time that you come forth to vindicate the Innocence and Peaceableness of the Non-conformists and pass your word to the King that they shall never lift up disloyal thought against him you cannot forbear to let us see how warmly you are concern'd to justifie the late Rebellion In that the King had turn'd his whole Kingdome into a Prison that many thousands of his Subjects were constrained to seek habitations abroad every Countrey even though it were among Savages and Canibals appear'd more hospitable to them than their own that his whole Reign was deformed with Sibthorpianism i. e. with his affecting an absolute and arbitrary Government that himself and his party were the cause of the War that the Parliament took up Arms in defence both of their Liberty and Religion and that their Cause against the King was like
that of Christianity only too good to be fought for c. And now when you ensure us that the Fanatiques shall never rebel it is for this reason only because there neither is nor can be any such thing as Rebellion for if the last War were none you are safe for ever forfeiting your Loyalty and if that cause were too good to be fought for it will be hard to find one too bad It is well you have declared that if you can do the Non-conformists no good you are resolved you will do them no harm and desire that they should lye under no imputation on your account I am confident you intended honestly but they are more endebted to your good will than your discretion When your very Apology in their behalf brings them under the greatest imputation For this not only makes good my suggestion which you would lay by your Caveat that they are acted by men of Democratical Spirits but withal it is a stronger evidence of their continuing constant and stubborn to their old Principles because as they would never be brought to disclaim them so now it seems they are resolved to justifie them and lay the whole guilt of the Rebellion upon the King himself I know you are a wise and wary man and design'd when you set pen to paper to take upon you the Person that is Personam induere of a Royallist and not to betray the least kindness to or concern for the Good Old Cause But you are a Gamester and know what vast odds a man may lay on Natures side And thus have I more than enough vindicated every page and period of my Preface and yet the main of your business is still behind for that was the least of your design to confute me your Plot was to take occasion to fly out into invectives against the Clergy of all Ages in general and of the Church of England in particular first as the cause of the late War and secondly as the hindrance of our present settlement and then having barr'd them from trinkling with State Affairs and wheadled the King against hearkning to their Counsels though you do it so grosly and with such an impudent malice that it is like stalking by the side of a Butter-fly with a face as broad as a Brass-Copper you advise Princes to a more moderate course of Government and teach them from many sad examples to behave themselves dutifully to their Subjects upon peril of their displeasure or worse I shall as briefly as I can consider your performance in all these particulars and so leave you to the shame of your own Meditations First then having with mighty exultation of Spirit and words much too good for your heart congratulated His Majesties most Happy Restauration just as Malefactors cry God save the King because they have escaped the Gallows and so do you magnifie his Clemency Mercy and Goodness for carrying the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity through But this serenity is suddainly over-cast and you knit your brows and depress your Superciliums and at length with much fleering and more reluctancy for you are mighty sorry to speak it yet because it is a sad truth tell it him you must that the Ecclesiastical Part would not accomplish his Felicity and no wonder when the Animosities and Obstinacy of some of the Clergy have in all Ages been the greatest obstacle to the Clemency Prudence and good intentions of Princes and the establishment of their affairs Which is to say that the Clergy has not only in all Ages nay and places too been the bane of Government but more particularly the Clergy of England murther'd His Royal Father and are more accomptable for His Majesties and the Kingdoms sufferings than either the Rebels that took his Crown off of his head or those that afterwards took his head off of his shoulders But they shall answer for themselves anon we must first traverse your first Bill against the Clergy in general But who are you that are thus acquainted with the Clergy of all Ages time out of mind sure you can be no less a man than one of the Patriarchs or a fifth from Methusalem or at least Andrew de Temporibus John's elder Brother you have so general an acquaintance with the Clergy of all Ages As for the Clergy of the Ages before Noahs flood I will not contend for for any thing that I know there might be Bishops of Munster and Cullen and Strasburg in those times and I cannot disprove it but that King Nimrod's Chaplains were his Hunts-men but in all Ages since I cannot find that they have been more cruel than other men Aaron I am sure was remarkable for his meekness and mercy for though the Grand Remonstrance of Corah were intended against himself and his Bran for trinkling Moses and the Members of the Sanhedrin yet did he bestir himself to attone the Rebellion and procure pardon for the Offenders Though I must confess his Grand-child Phinehas was an arrant Jewish Zealot that is as your modern Orthodox Rabbies inform you a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat And as for the Heathen Priests though they were very famous Trinklers I do not find that they were any great Men-eaters In my Roman Empire I do not read that they were fiercer Canibals of the Race of Man or Capon-kind than the Laity nor I believe can you prove out of your 5 Ep. to Marcellinus that the Clergy were the Authours of Julian's Persecution But the bottom of all this is that the Priests have in all Ages and in all Kingdomes been advanced to places of greatest Authority next to the Sovereign Power it self The Druids of Britany the Magi of Persia the Priests of AEgypt Judaea Assyria AEthiopia are a sufficient Indication that however fanciful men may fool themselves and their Countrey with other Philosophical Models and Theories of Policy yet Religion and the Ministers of Religion will have the greatest share in the Government and the reason is as evident as the experiment is Catholique in that nothing can so truly and effectually awe the greatest part of mankind as the dread of the world to come and therefore they whose peculiar Office it is to guide and instruct men in their future concerns must and will in spite of all the witty States-men in the world have the greatest reverence power and interest with the generality of the People And thus though the Authority of the Clergy of England be at this time by reason of some malignant effects of the late war at as low an ebb as perhaps the power of the Priests ever was under any Monarchy yet it is manifest that for all their disadvantages all of the Loyal Party Nobility Gentry and Commonalty that are sober and serious in the belief and profession of their Religion cannot but have a veneration to their Persons and a deference to their Judgements How else think you could they be so easily trinkled And as for all the several
Covenauters Cause were too good to be fought for as little Logick as I understand I understand so much that then the Kings was too bad to be fought for and that is enough for one Conclusion But whatever was the occasion of the War whether the Arch-bishop of Canterbury and the Vicar of Brackley as you will have it or Ignoramus and Mr. Selden as a second concludes or the School-men and the Universities as a third observes whether I say any or all of these accidents might contribute to it I am not concern'd because occasions of mischief are unaccountable for their being so in that men that have a mind to it may make any thing an Occasion and yet still the occasion shall be as innocent as I believe the Children of Edinburgh were But if instead of the Occasion you desire to be satisfied in the cause of the War seeing you have been at so much pains in transcribing an huge Gazet to give me satisfaction I think my self at least a little obliged to give you my opinion and if that be not sufficient to satisfie you I shall only advise you to take heed of being too inquisitive for assure your self your Party will have but little reason to con you any thanks for demanding any farther satisfaction Inprimis then it hapned in this War as it does in all others that there were some general Causes that were set on work by some particular Circumstances As 1. The unusual ignorance of the Common People concerning their Duty and Obligation to the Government every man supposing himself as much Master of his own Estate as if he had lived out of all Society and expecting that the King should be able to maintain the Common Safety without his particular Contribution and this you may easily imagine makes them apt to murmur and tumultuate in all such straits and necessities of the State as require Money and Taxes 2. The seditiousness of Persons of broken and shatter'd fortunes and as there are great numbers of such at all times so are they alwayes with the formost to promote Disturbances in all States because it is very possible they may make their Condition better but impossible they should ever make it worse 3. The great numbers of well-meaning men that are usually carried down with the stream so that though possibly they were never disobliged at Court nor infected with Seditious Principles against the State nor addicted to Fanatique Factions against the Church yet are easily over-born with the noise of a whole Kingdom to joyn with that Party that pretends with most confidence to zeal for the publique good These with many others are the Materials and common Principles of all Rebellion but they never or very rarely come into action unless they are put upon it by some other particular and emergent Causes And these were plainly The Insolence and Seditiousness of the Presbyteran Preachers for it seems the Clergy of all Parties as well as all Ages can be mischievous enough because those that can do most good may for the same reason do most harm and therefore it is as ordinary for some to obstruct the Clemency of Subjects as it is for others to obstruct the Clemency of Kings Now it is certain these men had gain'd a mighty esteem and reverence with the People partly by the confidence of their pretences stiling themselves Gods Ambassadours and chalenging as much submission to their Doctrines as if they had wrought Miracles or produced written Credentials from Heaven partly by the vehemence of their tone and gesture and the particular manner of acting their Sermons but chiefly by the subject matter of their popular discourses in which they were alwayes very sparing of their reproofs against the gainful vices of tradesmen such as fraud cozening and covetousness and on the contrary very prodigal of their declamations and suggestions against such miscarriages as were proper to the Government And by inveighing perpetually against oppression they seem'd to take part with the People against their Superiours But that which gave them more Authority than all this over their minds was a certain way they had got of raising unreasonable and unavoidable troubles of Conscience by which means they continually kept great multitudes of well-meaning persons in perfect slavery and subjection to their own good-pleasure Now by the advantage of all these Artifices it was easie for them to infuse any poyson into the minds of their Proselytes And what Principles they taught them in reference to the establish'd Government they are so vulgarly known and so sufficiently recorded that I suppose it is now very superfluous to inform the world It is enough that there is not one Aphorism of miscief and rebellion that they did not impose upon the People under the obligation of a Christian duty as it is largely and distinctly proved out of their own words in the Book of dangerous Positions and Proceedings that is an exact Collection of all the Treason in the world Do but read it over and then tell me what peaceable and orderly Subjects they are like to prove whose Consciences are acted by such lewd and desperate Principles But though the Puritan Preachers from their very beginning never spared themselves nor their lungs against their Governours yet under the late Kings Reign by reason of the remiss Government of Arch-bishop Abbot they became more bold and boysterous than ever and especially when they perceived his Majesty so sincerely addicted to the Church of England and so resolutely bent to reduce all Factious Dissenters to order and obedience they began to think the cause brought to its last gasp if he proceeded without check to his designs and therefore they bestir themselves and thrash the Pulpits to exasperate the People against the Government of the Church and inveigh in the coarsest and most bitter expressions against that of the State And thus by the zeal and madness of these men were the People at length preach'd out of all sense of their Duty and Allegiance and by the perpetual roarings and bellowings of these Geneva Bulls were perfectly amazed into Rebellion And that indeed was their powerful preaching to raise Armies and beat up the Alarm to a Civil War If any man shall be at leisure to peruse those Humiliation-Sermons that were contrived to sanctisie the Cause he shall meet with such wretched and horrible abuses of Religion as the wickedness of all former Ages is not able to parallel What horrid work did they make with the Word of God How shamelesly did they urge the Prophesies of the Old Testament in defiance to the Precepts of the New And with what intolerable presumption did they load his Majesty with every burthen they could pick up against Moab or Babylon Their impertinence was almost as bold as their impiety And the People were rarely taught any thing beside Treason and Blasphemy And thus were they preach'd into Arms and converted into Rebellion they press'd Horse and Foot out of every
A REPROOF TO THE Rehearsal Transprosed IN A Discourse to its Authour By the Authour of the ECCLESIASTICAL POLITIE London Printed for James Collins at the Kings Arms in Ludgate-street 1673. TO THE READER WHen I first condemn'd my self to the drudgery of this Reply I intended nothing but a serious Prosecution of my Argument and to let the World see that it is not reading Histories or Plays or Gazets nor going a Pilgrimage to Geneva nor learning French and Italian nor passing the Alps nor being a cunning Gamester that can qualifie a man to discourse of Conscience and Ecclesiastical Policy in that it is not capping an Argument with a story that will answer it nor clapping an Apothegm upon an Assertion that will prove it nor stringing up Proverbs and Similitudes upon one another that will make up a Coherent Discourse And for a great while I kept close to my resolution and contented my self to expose the man's Ignorance without laughing at it But he is all along so ridiculous that at last Flesh and Blood could not refrain from being a little pleasant with him And as it chances it happens not unluckily for I hope I have hereby given an Example how it is possible to be serious and merry with a Buffoon without violating the Laws of Decorum and to discourse with a Clown as long time as I have been writing without being rude or angry I have been much more tedious than at first I design'd and indeed than was necessary to correct such a Yelper But as I would not have you think that I have taken all this pains for his sake so let me tell you that when I undertake an Argument I love as far as I am able to handle it to some purpose and how mean soever the occasion of my writing may be to contrive a Book as useful to the Reader as if I had not been bound to trace another man's follies but had been left at liberty to pursue the Results of my own mind Thus did I heretofore deal with J. O and thus have I now dealt with this Trifler from their Impertinences to take advantage of discoursing upon material and pertinent Arguments And therefore the main design of this ensuing Treatise beside justifying my Grand Thesis of the Kings Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction against Perverseness and Impudence is taken up partly in carrying on my old War against Faction and Non-conformity and putting an end to all my trouble in it not only by baffling them but forcing them to see themselves baffled and convincing the Ring-leaders that they have nothing left to trust to but their own Impudence and the Peoples dulness But chiefly in shewing that certain and inviolable confederacy that there has always been between Non-conformity and the Good old Cause so that whenever one of them appears at Top the other is sure to lurk at Bottom and if I have proved it as I think I have sufficiently I may leave it to others to make out the Consequences But judge you whether I have not been hard put to it by this bold man when the hardest Task he has put me to has been to prove that the King and the Loyal Party were not the only guilty Persons in reference to the late Rebellion And now I think I have born Testimony enough for the Peace and Welfare of my Countrey and so I have done if it be to any effect I have a double reward if to none I have my own I have no other Civility to request of the Reader than only to desire him that if he shall think what I have written worth his perusal to read it over with an unprejudiced Mind and an ordinary Attention and then if he do not conclude this trifling man that has put me to all this trouble as despicable a Scribler as ever blotted Paper I must confess I have lost not only my labour but my Understanding SIR I Have perused Your Book and of This you might have been sooner informed had I not immediately after I had undertaken your Correction been prevented by a dull and lazy distemper but being in some measure recruited I have as my health and leisure would permit given my self the divertisement of these following Animadversions You have indeed taken the Advantage though it is cowardly and dishonourably done to take it of accosting me in such a clownish and licentious way of writing as you know to be unsuitable both to the Civility of my Education and the Gravity of my Profession And this is so like the Ingenuity of the Brother-hood that I all along both foresaw and foretold it It has ever been their old Artifice that when they are baffled out of all their impotent Pretences by dint of Reason and Argument that then they should hire some Buffoon to recover their Credit and Cause by downright Rudeness and Impudence But this device shall not serve their turn no fooling shall divert me from the serious prosecution of my Design And though I shall not baulk any good jests if they will thrust themselves upon me for fear of the day of judgment as you forsooth ridiculously and impudently enough pretend to have rejected thousands meerly upon that account yet however I shall for a better reason forbear hunting after them viz. to convince the world how little Wit is requisite to prove that you have none at all There is nothing more required to make some Creatures ridiculous than barely to shew them And by that time I have dispatcht all that I shall think convenient to chastise the folly and rashness of your Undertaking I am pretty confident you will have so much occasion to look simply that the company will be fully satisfied there will be but little need of sending for a witty man to put you out of countenance In the first place then after a long train of Beginning of 96 Pages that might indifferently serve against all the Ecclesiastical Politicians from the beginning to the end of the World I find you at length begin under pretence of Animadversions upon a Preface to attaque all my Discourses of Ecclesiastical Polity and immediately fall on front and reere and with an horrid deal of noise and astonishment warn all Mankind that the Grand Thesis upon which I stake you all along speak the language of a gamester not only all my own Divinity and Policy Reputation Preferment and Conscience but even the Crowns and Fate of Princes and the Liberties Lives and Estates and which is more the Consciences of their Subjects is this That it is absolutely necessary to the peace and government of the world that the Supreme Magistrate of every Common-wealth should be vested with a Power to govern and conduct the Consciences of Subjects in affairs of Religion Is it so why what then what then why nothing at all but this is the grand Thesis For you are not provided with one syllable of objection against it and have not spent so much as a Tale or
but they are slain every mothers son of them But it is you that are Sir Solomon or the dead-doing Scanderbag that have laid them all a gasping and not left such a Creature as a Non-conformist in Nature Was ever Cause thus defended or men thus abused to be marked out for a succession of incurable dunces for spending so much zeal and logique in so absurd a Cause But poor J. O. what an unfortunate wretch art thou that thou art an old Cob-nut in Controversie conquerour of Scores upon scores in comparison of whose Eristical prowess both Sir Solomon and his Sword were but wooden tools that when thou wert so unfortunately and so unexpectedly dasht to pieces that then thou shouldst be so strangely unhappy or unadvised as to hire such an empty and unkernel'd shell as this to avenge thy ruine a thing so soft and harmless that a pellet of dow or soft clay would have done as much execution and yet so silly and ignorant too that he knows not on which side to play his stroaks and as lamentably bruised as thou art has discharged all his little strength upon thine own head He has drol'd upon you as far as his wit would give him leave in as many capacities as you have past through Providential Revolutions he sometimes abuses you as tall J the Consonant and sometimes as little I the Vowel sometimes he makes sport with you as in Conjunction with O sometimes as at opposite points sometimes you are a Talisman i. e. as much as you detest it an Idolatrous Image and sometimes an He-cow i. e. either a Bull or an Oxe and at last a very man with an hot head a wide mouth a rude tongue rotten teeth and long nails with abundance more of such small tap-lash and blew John that he has wantonly squirted upon your venerable and immortal Name And then after all this has recorded you for a dull and senseless tool upon supposition that you could be so simple and weak-headed as to assert what he could not but know you have given under your own hand in legible black and white And now have you not all reason to joyn throats to rail down that villainous Engine the Press and the drunken Dutchman that would not be content with the Wine-Press not for contriving as you accuse him those innumerable Syntagms of Alphabets that have ever since pester'd the world for there is not one Alphabet now extant that was not reduced into the Syntagm of a Cris-cross row some ages before the Dutch-man was born except only the Universal Character and that was invented some Ages since I had almost forgot J. O's Primer that would never suffer the Letters to be ranged under the Conduct of a Cris-cross For having of his own head disbanded the Lords Prayer he was Commission'd by Authority of Parliament to casheir or at least new model the Cris-cross-row and what reformation he wrought in the several squadrons of vowels mutes semivowels c. I shall not here relate but as for the poor Cross that was without any mercy turn'd out of all service not because it kept alwayes so close to the Loyal or malignant party but because it was a mere symbolical Ceremony set there on purpose to transform a plain english Alphabet into a Popish Cris-cros-row A great and pious work worthy the pains of so great a Divine and the Wisdome of so long a Parliament But to return has not your beloved Press after all your fondness sold you a sweet bargain and more than turn'd her tayl upon you With what zeal and courage have you asserted its Liberty from the bondage of Imprimaturs and the Inquisition of Prelates What stiff and stubborn Homilies have you made to make it good that the suppression of a good Libel is no less than Martyrdom and if it extend to the whole Impression a kind of Massacre whereof the Execution ends not in the slaying of an Elemental Life but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence the breath of Reason it self slays an Immortality rather than a Life Such fustian bumbast as this past for stately wit and sence in that Age of politeness and reformation Have you suffer'd Banishment and Persecution together has the Engine been content to wander with so mean a fellow as Newman the Cobler through almost all Counties of the Kingdome for the sake of publishing seditious and abusive Pamphlets has it drawn your selves and your un-cris-cross'd Letters into seditious words and meetings and then vilain as it is does it turn informer and when you had thought you had confidence enough to outbrazen all accusations by word of mouth to forswear your own most avowed Principles and most notorious practices what a surprising trepan is this that this perfidious and apostate Engine should betray all and produce your own Writings and Records against your selves What think you now of a publick Tooth-drawer to wrench out its old ugly rotten teeth there is no outfacing this printed black and white and nothing could be more rashly and indiscreetly done than for you to attempt it You had been a prudent man indeed had you applyed your self to J. O. and the rest of your good masters that set you on work and pay'd you your wages and told them plainly Gentlemen you engage at such mighty disadvantage on that side of the question that you have hitherto undertaken that it is not possible for humane confidence to defend your cause Burn therefore all your old Puritan books wheel about to the opinion of the Church of England and force them to wheel about to yours and then if you your selves will but stand stoutly to it for face and conscience let Crop alone But now when you have done this of your own head and without any of their Commission you have as it falls out only betrayed their cause and your own ignorance to cross thus awkerdly with their great and master-principle And this as it happens proves at last the most pleasant scene of all your folly though you have blunder'd so shamefully in every thing you have offer'd at for as if you had long owed your self a shame and were now resolved to pay off all Arrears with Interest in the very same unhappy Paragraph where you deny it with so much resentment and indignation in the name of all the Nonconformists in the known and habitable parts of the Earth that to institute new signs in the worship of God is to institute new Sacraments you are so unhappy are you wonderfully enamoured of that pertinent passage directly to the contrary cited out of St. Austins ten Volumes by J. O. Signa cum ad res divinas pertinent sunt sacramenta so his M S. reads it though in your own and all other printed Copies it is read Sacramenta appellantur Now by this J. O. without doubt intended to prove as he immediately subjoyns that these things are real Sacraments or pretend to be so fully and effectually to all
of the heads of the ensuing Discourse I tell him that I intend to bestow some Animadversions upon one J. O. But would I had told you of this fooling at first for then I had saved you the labour of your first fourteen Pages Now is it credible nay is it not most preposterous to think that you should begin your Remarques upon my Preface before you had read as you call it so much as the Preamble Or that you perused only three or four lines at a time and so fell into your Animadversions in the same order that they are publish'd No doubt you saw this fooling before you set pen to paper but had no power to save the labour of all the former Pages That had cut off the pleasant Animadversions upon the Dilemma the Press and the Importance This wit is such a tempting and bewitching thing that a man has not power to forgo a good jest unless it be now and then i. e. very seldom when he chances to think of the day of judgement But though this fooling as if you had finisht your Animadversions upon the first Page before you had read the second be silly enough yet it is not altogether so bad as confuting the first part of a sentence before you came to the full period For thus when I affirm that as for the danger of the return of Popery into this Nation I know none but the Non-conformists boisterous and unreasonable opposition to the Church of England Here you stop in the middle of the sentence and clap down a full point after I know none And then if there be none the consequence is very easie what a fool I am for my labour to print a Book upon such an impertinent Argument and so away you run with a great deal of insulting and scorn and never stop career till you come to p. 271. and there you crave mercy for taking me a little too short and so add the latter part of the sentence and then gravely confess that this indeed has some weight in it for truly before you knew none too And now though one would think no pretender to Controversial skill could ever match such trifling as this yet I remember J. O. served me just such another trick that was full as foolish and somewhat more knavish Thus discoursing of Christian Liberty I had laid down this assertion That mankind have a Liberty of Conscience over all their actions whether morally or strictly religious as far as it concerns their Judgements but not their Practices He very honestly mangles this into two distinct propositions The first that Mankind has a Liberty of Conscience over all their actions whether morally or strictly religious And this he closes up with a full period as if it were an entire Problem by it self and then gravely insults as well he might over so magnificent a Grant and yet after all was not so ingenuous as you are to cry me mercy but suffers his unwary Reader to go away with an opinion of its being the Grand Thesis of that Chapter These are Polemick Divines for the Pope and the Good Old Cause that though they can say nothing for themselves are resolved never to hold their peace and rather than give out will tire their Adversaries with such wretched and intolerable trifling as this And that was the only intention of your Libell to divert people from attending to the serious Argument but you shall not escape so I will never leave my advantage to traverse your impertinencies for I have you all at my mercy and there I am resolved to keep you and assure your selves you can never gain any thing by offering any resistance Your Cause is so lamentably weak and defenceless that you can only betray it and expose your selves by giving an occasion to the Controversie And now after all this lost labour that you are of opinion might much better have been spared we are at length arrived upon the brink of the Preface But here before you leap in it will be convenient to pitch upon some standing jest that may give rellish and picquancy to all the other insipid and phlegmatick parts of the discourse and now because neither Authour nor Chaplain nor pink of Courtesie nor Priest nor Buffoon nor Prince Volscius nor Cicero are tuant enough what think you if three or four times in every page I call my Adversary Mr. Bayes Will it not be an admirable jest to repeat the word Bayes three or four hundred times for the pleasant conceit and the pure elegance of avoiding Tautologies Yes by all means it is just as much wit as if the word had been in the language of Charing-Cross or Lincolns-inn-fields plainly Bastard or more politely Son of a Whore Or as if you had kept to the language of your own more serious Buffoonry and the word had been Baals Priest or a Locust of the bottomless Pit or an Antichristian Beast For though it might pass for a very trim fancy in Mr. Lacy to fasten this nick-name upon a vain and pedantick Poet yet for you to borrow it without leave and apply it to a Person of a Sacred and Serious Profession without reason is flat dulness and impudence For who can imagine where the conceit of it should lye to repeat a Word of another mans Invention three or four hundred times together and that chiefly for this very reason viz. to avoid repetitions Next to the killing jest of whoop and hola I never met with any thing like it You are such another man But yet so transporting was the conceit among the Brother-hood for they are most implacable wits that at your first appearance there was nothing to be found among them but Joy and Jubilee the 15th of March was not a more jovial day neither was there a greater destruction of Cheese-cakes in Islington at the opening of the New River All preciseness was laid aside not a gloomy look nor an erected white to be seen but they let down their eye-lids as their honest neighbours do upon better occasions their shop-windows And all upon the suddain they are become the most jolly and most humorous companions of the Town And the very mention of Bayes is such a splitting conceit It even endangers both their spleens and their lungs yes and their Gloves too they rub them so heartily There is great hopes that it will alter their humours and mend their complexions at least there is no doubt but it will prove hereafter an admirable specifick for Fanatique obstructions And for this you were immediately horst upon the shoulders of the people where folly and ignorance alwayes rides and carried off with victorious noise and uproar and shewn in triumph to your old Companions that little suspected you would ever have come to this in Lincolns-Inn-fields and at Charing-Cross and there leave you to be preferred to the service of Punchanella to prompt jests and repartees to his Puppets you are just a fit Oracle for such
Casts and Clans of Non-conformists they are perfectly enslaved to the Authority of their several Teachers So that do what we can the Clergy will have a strong influence upon the people all the present contest is whether it be not more beneficial to the Government that such should be protected and encouraged who profess Loyalty and have given no ground to doubt the sincerity of their profession than such as have heretofore incited the people to Rebellion and never since gave any the least assurance of their having renounced their former Principles which if they had they would have done it loud enough and still as far as they dare venture disturb the present quiet and decry the present settlement of the Nation And this is the last issue of your Advice to rebate the Power of the Regular Clergy thereby to enlarge and advance that of the Non-conformists for as our Interest weakens and moulders away it is unavoidable but that some others that pretend to the same Office must gain as much Power as we lose unless people fall into down-right Atheism and contempt of Religion and that sets them loose from all effectual obligations of Loyalty to their Prince and Duty to their Countrey and Honesty to one another and if the humour grow strong and prevalent they in a little time grow barbarous and ungovernable and with looseness of manners and a general neglect of the publique quickly bring on disorders and for the most part dissolutions of Government So that this is plain enough that no State can be tolerably govern'd or secured but by the assistance of Religion And then if that have so powerful an influence upon affairs of State and over the minds of the People its publique Officers that have the greatest share of Power over that cannot but have a proportionable share of Power over them And for this reason have wise Princes in all Ages entrusted them with places of greatest Authority and Reputation in the Government and good reason too for if they are but qualified with parts and abilities equal to others that makes them as fit States-men as any but then the interest proper to their Office gives them a mighty and unimaginable advantage over all And hence it is that they have in all Ages been envied and maligned by every proud man that thought himself qualified for the great places that they filled and these have alwayes set themselves to asperse their Government and to expose them to the hatred of the People by charging all necessary severity and just execution of Laws upon their Tyranny The Prince is a gracious Prince but it is these men that thrust him upon these cruel and sanguinary courses and were these bloody Counsellours once remov'd His Majesty would quickly return to His Natural Clemency and we should see no more of these Merciless and Arbitrary proceedings And this has been the cruelty of the Clergy in all Ages that they have not trifled with their Authority but have been watchful to nip Sedition in the bud and by a little severity at first save all those executions that would be necessary to suppress it afterwards For if once it gets head and form it self into a Party it is then upon even terms with the Government and nothing but the event of War can decide the Controversie Whereas all beginnings of mischief are easily withstood and to take off one Malecontented Head of Faction may ordinarily save the lives of thousands of well-meaning people And that is the grievance of such as you would seem to be that the Clergy have alwayes been watchful upon their designs and kept the innocent people out of harms way by snapping the contrivers of mischief And wherever their precipitate violent rigorous and extreme Counsels as you call them have been effectually followed it has usually saved the trouble and expence of Civil Wars unless when the storm was grown too great before they came to the Helm and then it is not in their power to lay it that must be done by other men and other instruments It were easie for them by timely care to prevent Wars but when the people are prepared and resolved for it afore-hand they cannot force them to be peaceable by Laws and nothing can reduce them but beating them into obedience And these are the two things that may make them sometimes seem more rigorous than other States-men in that 1. They are usually more watchful upon the artifices of ambitious or discontented Grandees 2. In that they are more aware of the Impostures of Religion and understand the mischiefs of Enthusiasm more perfectly than usually Lay-men can or at least will do and this puts them upon that kind of severity which those that suffer by it though justly call Persecution though it is notoriously manifest to any person of common prudence that for the most part the offenders are not punisht for their private conceits but only for the security of the State in that either they themselves carry on ill designs under that pretext or if they are simple and well-meaning they are carried on by those that do I cannot conjecture any other grounds you have of charging the Clergy with rigour and obstinacy in all Ages unless it be that they are of all Orders of men the most faithful and zealous servants of their Masters and the most vehement assertors of the Supreme Power against popular encroachments This I am sure was the only ground of the late Long-Parliaments hatred to the Bishops because they were as one express'd it the trustiest agents of Tyranny because of that stubborn and invincible opposition they shewed to their Rebellious and Democratical designs and for that reason did the Cabal that trinkled all the rest of the Members petition the People to petition themselves to remove them both from the King and out of the House because whilst they stood in the way they could not come at the King that is the Crown And this too Mr. Trinkle is the ground of all your indignation for it is purely out of displeasure to the English Clergy that you are transported into this modest and mannerly censure of the Clergy of all the world And your enmity to them is nothing else than that they preach Doctrines so contrary to yours and after all the fatal Consequences of the late Rebellion will not be prevail'd upon to perswade the people that the good old Cause was the Cause too good And this becomes your Brazen Modesty to indite the most sacred and serious Profession in the World of all the mischiefs and miseries that ever befell Mankind without alledging any instance of proof unless it be the Clergy of the Church of England and that 1. because they will not be reconciled to a good opinion of those men that have been engaged in actual Rebellion and yet are so far from acknowledging their Errour that they justifie their Cause 2. because they do not think it convenient to indulge and connive at
the Propagation of such Principles as prepare People for the like Practices upon the like opportunities But in the next place as the Clergy of all Ages have ever been the greatest Obstacle of the Clemency and Prudence of Princes so are they not so well fitted by Education as others for Political Affairs Good now Sir Pol what is the defect of their education Is it that they have not that liberty that others have to frequent the Gaming Ordinaries or make Observations at Charing-Cross and in Lincolns-Inn-fields Excepting these wonderful advantages in which you indeed though very few Gentlemen beside outstrip them I cannot see what breeding other persons can boast of that Clergy-men may not have as well as they They are born as other men are with variety of natural Parts and Abilities and they may emprove them as Kings and other mortal men do by reflecting upon the Histories of former times and the present transactions to regulate themselves by in every Circumstance And though it cannot reasonably be expected they should have Royal Understandings because they were never born with them yet what hinders but they may have Gentlemens Memories and so be as fit for Government as any of their fellow Subjects and if they are not as fit as Kings themselves that is no disparagement of their abilities especially when as they have not the education so they were not intended for the Trade of Kings So that you have shewn nothing but the Impotency of your spite and Malice to pass one and the same censure upon all men of a Profession when you might with as much truth and ingenuity have pass'd it upon all Mankind However the Clergy are born capable of Wisdome as well as others and then why may they not acquire it too in the same methods with others by Study and Travel and Experience and Observation and I do not see what greater advantage you have made of these than any poor Reader might have done beside being hardned in Malice and Impudence and Shreds of Latin But still you improve when next to this Remarque upon the unfitness of the Clergy by reason of their Education for political affairs you immediately adde That they have the advantage above others and even if they would but keep to their Bibles would make the best Ministers of State in the World So that it seems by their Education that is peculiar to them as Clergy-men viz. the study of the Bible they have the advantage of all others to make the best Ministers of State in the World so ridiculous was it for you to intimate that they are not so well fitted by Education as others for Political Affairs when your very next words acknowledge that they are the best fitted of any men in the World Was ever Malice so inconsistent with it self You have an implacable mind to vent your Spleen and Rancour against the Clergy but you are so conscious to your self of Impudence and Disingenuity that you are ashamed of the folly and the foulness of your own reproaches and that perpetually runs you up into these ridiculous Contradictions Could any man in the World beside your self have been so precipitate as to suggest that the Clergy are less fitted than others by Education for Political Affairs and yet in the same breath confess that they have from that Education that is proper to themselves as the Clergy the advantage of all men in the World beside Yes If they would keep to their Bibles but God therefore frustrates them because though knowing better they seek and manage their Greatness by the lesser and meaner Maxims Good Mr. Insolence Why not they keep to their Books as well as such Truants as you This is but a ridiculous and incredible Paradox that those that are best acquainted with the Rules of Justice and Government should for that reason be under a fatal necessity not to observe them But if they are not then seeing they have the advantage of knowing better than others and seeing there is no peculiar reason to hinder them more than others from making a right use of their knowledge then it is unavoidable by the Confession of your own Malice but that they must be most likely to make the best Ministers of State in the World Nothing can possibly hinder unless God Almighty after he has bless'd men with the greatest advantages for Wisdome and Integrity should by some miraculous and immediate stroak from Heaven blast and infatuate all their Counsels Why rather than fail of your spite to the Clergy he shall come down as he did at the building of Babel to confound all the contrivances of Church-men For truly I think the reason that God does not bless them in Affairs of State is because he never intended them for that Employment Good Mr. Secretary is there nothing can escape your knowledge Are you not content to be admitted into the Privacy of Kings but you must be God Almighties Colbert understand all the intrigues of his Providence and be of the Cabinet Council to the Most high Is it not enough that you are acquainted with the King all over you have observed his parts and given an account of his memory and understanding you have kept him company and given him your Testimony of the unblameableness of his Life and Conversation you have been admitted with him into his Privy Closet and can tell what he studies and what books he reads what he censures and what he approves Great favours these for a Gentleman of private condition and breeding and yet they are not sufficient to satisfie the ambition of such a Gonzales as you but you must be flying to Heaven forsooth by the help of your Ganzas even as I would fly thither without the help of Grace And there you must be prying into all the secret Councils of Divine Providence and you can confidently tell all the thoughts and designs of the Almighty and write Gazets of what News in Heaven Of all the secret ones that ever I met with give me you for a bold one No doubt you are no ordinary Mortal and have your habitation at least in the High Places of Armageddon where J. O. dwelt when he discovered all the Methods and Maxims whereby God orders the Dispensations and Revolutions of his Providence He is the Will. Lilly as you are the Poor Robin of the Churches in so much that he is able to give them an exact Ephemeris of all turns and alterations of Weather and to advise them in all changes of Affairs still to keep on the same side with God himself let him shift parties never so often when it is seasonable to sail by a side Wind against the seeming opposition of his Providence and when to sing Songs upon Sigionoth and by some secret intimations knock quite off with him from any Good old Cause or Good old Principles That such bold Impostours should dare to challenge any interest how much more familiarity
with the Most high You know that he never intended Church-men for Ministers of State You know what he intends away you wretch if you have any spark of Modesty unextinguish'd retire into your Closet and lament and pine away for these desperate Blasphemies The Ruac Hakodesh dwell in such a distemper'd and polluted mind as yours it may as soon unite it self to a Swine Fatuos hujus terrae filios quod attinet says a Jewish Zealot non magis nostro judicio prophetare possunt quà m asinus rana Asses and Tod-poles may as soon expect the Impressions of the divine Spirit as such dunces and sots as you And yet you do not think it enough to pretend acquaintance with the present thoughts and intentions of the Almighty but you must be betraying his future designs and blabbing what shall be hereafter Thus you dare divine augurate and presage mutual felicity to his Majesty and the Kingdome from his gracious Declaration of Indulgence and that what ever humane Accident may happen they will they can never have cause to repent this action or its Consequences Amen! I wish you a true Prophet with all my soul nothing recreates me so much as to hear of the prosperity of my King and Countrey But if you should ever live to see this Declaration repented of would it not be a sad rebuke to your confidence I am sure if it were my case I should never be able to lift up my head after it And though we have no Laws against counterfeit Prophets because it is rare for any man in these Northern Climates to arrive to that degree of Impudence and Vanity yet among the Jewish Zealots they were punish'd more severely than notorious Rogues and Cut-throats And if you do not pretend to some particular ensurance from Heaven you add rashness to your impudence to be thus confident in your predictions of future Contingencies For you your own self know how uncertain the success of the best Contrivances may be for after all things may be laid with all the depth of humane Policy there happens lightly some uggly little contrary Accident from some quarter or other of Heaven that frustrates and renders all ridiculous I should have been so modest as to say successess for wise Counsels are not rendred foolish by disappointment Now was it not possible that some of these little ugly Accidents that might or might not be fore-seen might spoil all the success of so wise and so well-laid an Action And therefore I say it again it was not discreetly done to ensure success so boldly to so contingent an Event There are thousands of little and great Accidents that it is not possible for humane Wisdome to prevent that might frustrate all its good consequences and there are some that my slender judgment could easily have foreseen and fore-told It was possible that the Non-conformists might have made ill use of his Majesties goodness and condescention to embolden their Party to more sawcy and insolent demands This I say is possible for all the King has so obliged them by his late mercy that if there were any such Knave there can be no such fool among them that would ever lift up an ill thought against him I know as well as you that there is not in the World a more grateful and good natur'd Generation of men in all other cases but the case of Loyalty and of the Race of Capons So that still I say it is possible they may forget his kindness and their own Duty and that they will not I think your word is no competent security For you have pass'd it but once before and that with your hand upon your heart and that was when you protested upon your Honour and Integrity your own reading of the fifth Epistle to Marcellinus Beside as it is possible for the Non-conformists to be unmindful of their Duty and their Obligation to the King so is it you know possible too for the Members of Parliament to be some time or other so trinkled that nothing shall put them in good humour but cancelling this Declaration or any other Act of Indulgence to the Non-conformists And then that though no other sinister Accident should intervene may for all your Prophecie prove an occasion of some Repentance You know how much I might here insult over your baffled Impudence but this is enough to let you see how unadvised a thing it is to be too positive in Predictions And now to return to the Clergy have you not made an admirable speech to have them thrust out from all Offices in the State because they are unqualified for them by their Education and that because by their Education they have peculiar advantages to make the best Ministers of State were it not that God that has prepared and qualified them above all other men for that employment will not bless them in it because he never intended them for it For a lucky hand at Contradictions you are the man And had you not thus demonstratively baffled your own malice I might have confuted your rash censures of all Ages by the experience and opinion of most Ages and shewn that as none are better qualified for State-Affairs than Church-men so none have acquitted themselves with greater Art or Success and that things have rarely miscarried but when their Counsels have not been effectually followed as I shall shew anon in the Cases of Cardinal Granvile and Arch-Bishop Laud though when all is done you know the wisdome of a design is not to be measured by its success But your insolence is not worth so much Correction Only look upon our next Neighbours o're-sea and tell me to whose conduct that King and Kingdom owe their present flourishing condition Who were they that brought it back from the very point of dissolution to that Settlement and Grandeur it now enjoys Were they not Church-men and did they not do it by such Counsels as you think perhaps as the case stood were precipitate and sanguinary viz. when the Nation was divided into two powerful Factions by resolving to break one to pieces for ever that so they might not be embroil'd in Civil Wars upon every slight occasion whenever the People grew wanton or any Great Man hapned to be out of favour whereas the former Statesmen that were for the trinkling Policy entail'd an hereditary Civil War upon the Kingdom from Generation to Generation even as I remember J. O. sayes the Lord had sworn a great while ago to destroy the Amalekites and the Kerns But having taken upon your self the Office of Vicar General to the Clergy of all Ages and all Nations Hungary Transylvania Bohemia c. you are not content to turn them all out of publique employment in the State but you would wheedle them out of all the comforts and advantages of life and perswade them to strip themselves of all the secular conveniencies wherewith the wisdome and the bounty of former Ages have
Antisacraments to the prejudice of Christs own true Sacraments than which worse need not be said of the most Antichristian Church in the World And thus the Commissioners of the Worcester-house Conference obstructed his Majesties felicity and the Nations settlement because they thought it reasonable and convenient to stick to the present establishments of the Church till some proof of their unlawfulness was produced and because when none could be produc'd they would not condescend to that temper and moderation as to change all her Constitutions without any other reasonable Motive than to salve the reputation of the Presbyterians they must be branded for cunning and revengeful men And good reason too because the Non-conformists demand nothing but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better And yet all their demands are against our legal Establishments of which your worship is so enamour'd And as for the Act of Uniformity and that superfoetation of Acts that followed after it though they were all establish'd by Law yet were they procured by trinkling nay by Bishops trinkling and for that reason serve only to expose the Wisdome of King and Parliament to after Ages Another special commendation of the Church of England as by Law establish'd that its Legal Establishments are so foolish as to be a perpetual Testimony of the Law-makers Folly Find me out a Fanatique in Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Scotland Geneva Pin-makers Hall J. O's Congregation that may not boast his deep respect and reverence to the Church of England upon as good Terms as your self So that it is plain here you did but Personam induere of an honest Zealot for say what you will you must and shall know that all Zealots are not Rogues and Cut-throats And after all your counterfeit reverence you mean no body else by this particular Bran than the Bishops and the Clergy of the Church of England as 't is by Law establish'd Upon them it is that you dispense forth this sweet Character with so much bounty and in the very spirit of meekness And in the first place Arch-bishop Laud cannot lye quiet in his Grave but after a great many fair and foul words as consistent with themselves as the rest of your Book you are pleased at length to score all the miscarriages of the late Kings Reign and all the miseries of the late War upon his head and Conscience I suppose because he was a man so learned so pious so wise so studious to do both God and his Majesty good service you thought he was better able to bear it than some others whose reputation was not altogether so clear and unquestionable But poor Bishop Laud this is hard measure that when never any man's Innocence clear'd it self so gallantly from all the assaults of Malice and Calumny his venerable ashes should be thus insolently arraign'd by every bold and Fanatique Blockhead For notwithstanding the vigour and activity of his mind his zeal for the settlement and prosperity of the Church his care to reduce Religion to sober and justifiable Principles his Interest in the Kings favour and Counsels yet was he so wise and so pious in the conduct of all his affairs that when he was devested of all Power and Protection when he was exposed to the violence and outrage of the people when Calumny was let loose upon him when he was treated not only without mercy but justice and common civility when Libels and Petitions against him were rewarded when tumults and clamours were invited when he was even overwhelm'd with the number of Slanders Jealousies and Accusations when he was prosecuted by some with the utmost Fraud and Artifice by others with an unheard of malice and violence when his Murther was decreed with an absolute Doom before his Trial when his impeachment was drawn up in the most heinous and aggravating terms when the Evidence was managed with an unusual vehemence and animosity yet after all this his Innocence appear'd so clear and his Integrity so unblemish'd that not only his Judges but his very enemies were convinced and ashamed of their own Accusations For when the particular Articles of his Charge came to be examined they proved after the expence of a great deal of time and wit and eloquence so trifling and silly that they durst not venture to proceed any farther against him in way of legal Tryal and so were forced to condemn him and he was the first and last that was ever so condemned by Ordinance of Parliament without any other Formality than bringing him once to the Commons Bar for fashion sake that he might not be condemn'd unseen as he was unhear'd but condemn'd he was for no other Crime than that of cumulative Treason that is what you please and by this Impudence they might take away the life of any innocent man if either they hated him or he liked not them But the Remarque that his Historian has made upon the review of all their proceedings against him is so just and observable that all Circumstances consider'd it will appear the highest Act of Malice and Impudence that ever was before committed for since it has been outdone by any Age and under any Government in the World Viz. That as the predominant Party in the united Provinces to bring about their ends in the death of Barnevelt subverted all those fundamental Laws of the Belgick Liberty for maintenance whereof they took up Arms against Philip the second So the Contrivers of this mischief had violated all the fundamental Laws of the English Government for maintenance whereof they had pretended to take up Arms against the King It was said they a fundamental Law of the English Government and the first Article in the Magna Charta that the Church of England shall be free and shall have all her whole Rights and Priviledges inviolable Yet to make way unto the condemnation of this innocent man the Bishops must be voted out of their place in Parliament which most of them have held far longer in their Predecessors than any of our noble Families in their Progenitors and if the Lords refuse to give way unto it as at first they did the people must come down to the house in multitudes and cry No Bishops no Bishops at the Parliament doors till by the Terrour of the Tumults they extort it from them It is a fundamental Law of the English Liberty That no Free-man shall be taken or imprisoned without cause shewn or be detained without being brought unto his answer in due form of Law Yet here we see a Free-man imprisoned ten whole weeks together before any charge was brought against him and kept in Prison three whole Years more before his general accusation was by them reduced unto particulars and for a Year almost detain'd close Prisoner without being brought unto his answer as the Law requires It is a fundamental Law of the English Government That no man be disseized of his Free-hold or Liberties but
Engagement in defence of the Parliament and Army meaning as they did that as the King was virtually in the Parliament so was the Parliament virtually in the Army And thus was their silly and sensless Distinction of the King 's personal and politick Capacity turn'd upon themselves And the same Articles and Demands that the Parliament sent to the King they sent to the Parliament and baffled all their Excuses by Precedents from their own Principles and Proceedings v. g. Their Charge against the eleven Presbyterian-members by the Example of the Archbishop and the Earl of Strafford when they pleaded that they could not legally procede against them till the particulars of their Crime were specified and so they acted over all the same Knavery again till they at length proceded to crown all their wickedness with the Kings murther But the fraud and malice the injustice and folly the impudence and hypocrisie of these men is so notorious that it need not be reported and yet so unconceivably horrid that it would scarce be credited They committed all the boldest impieties in the world not only under the greatest shews of Religion but by Authority of divine Impulse they still sought the Lord for all their wickedness and they were directed to all their Murthers and Perjuries by his deep and hidden discoveries of himself to his secret Ones They made no more of an Oath than other men do of a Complement they would swear an hundred times backward and forward to follow the Revolutions of Providence and the Rump when they had murthered the King absolv'd themselves by their own Vote from Perjury it was but voting the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance to be null and void and they were as innocent as if they had never taken them But to say all in one word their Rebellion was not only against the King but against Monarchy it self that is to say against all Kings And I remember I have seen an humble Testimony for God in this perillous time by a few who have been bewailing their own and others Abominations and would not be comforted until their Redeemer who is holy be exalted in Righteousness and his Name which has been so much blasphemed be sanctified in the sight of the Nations subscribed by J. O. and some other secret ones In which having witnessed against all the Backslidings and Abominations of many from the Publick Good Old Cause and bemoaned the Rebuke that was poured forth upon the Rump and Barebones Parliament they procede to witness in all humility and fear against the setting up or introducing any Person whatsoever as King or chief Magistrate or an House of Lords or any other thing of like Import under what name or title soever or any other Power arising from the Nation as a Nation upon the old corrupt and almost ruinated Constitution apprehending that the great Work of taking the Kingdom from man and giving it to Christ hath had its beginning in the Revolutions we have been under And then positively they do witness for andhumbly assert that the Right of making and giving Laws unto Men is originally in God who hath given this Power as well as the Execution thereof unto Christ as he is the Son of Man and therein made universal Lord and Sovereign over the whole World and under Christ as his Ministers a certain number of men qualified and limited according to his Word ought to be set apart to the Office of chief Rule Government over these Nations as part of Christ's universal Kingdom So that you see J. O. is a profest enemy to the present Government of the State upon the same Principles that he is a Non-conformist to the present Establishment of the Church He is bound in Conscience to abhorr and oppose Monarchy in pure Obedience to the Institutions of Christ as King of Saints and Nations having appointed in his Word a certain number of Men to be set apart for the Office of chief Rule and Government over these and all other Nations in the World Now I think it is convenient that men who have openly witnessed such Principles as these should at least be bound to unwitness them before they are too confidently trusted by the present Government J. O. was absolutely for the divine Right of a Common-wealth but a very little before his Majesties Restitution for this Declaration was publish'd after the Cheshire Insurrection upon occasion whereof he threatens to witness with full evidence to the Conviction of all Upright ones against the abominable Malignity Treachery and Enmity of many in eminent Power and in the publick Ministry and then I dare appeal to your self whether it would not become him to recant such a positive Principle of Rebellion as this before he can with any modesty boast his own and his Parties Allegiance to the present Government At least if he refuse this when he is upbraided to it that is an undoubted evidence of his Constancy to his old Principles and then judge you whether it is fit for such a man to claim a Liberty of publick talking in any Common-wealth when he is under a tye of Conscience to subvert it And yet it was upon this occasion that I fell to preaching Repentance and calling for signal Marks and Acknowledgments c. when with all the scorn and indignation in the World he spit at my bare suspicions of their Loyalty in that as he has the confidence to affirm they give all the security for it that mankind can desire from their profest duty principle faith and doctrine And this Impudence I must confess provoked me to deal somewhat more roundly with him and to let him see how great and how many obligations himself and his party lay under to a publick Repentance Of all which you have taken no notice but only to wonder at my Insolence and that signifies nothing but only to shew your own The grounds and motives that I have laid before you to exhort you to this duty are plain and undeniable they are too many to be here repeated you may if you please find them in my Reply to J. O. from p. 629. to p. 641. If you can quit your selves of them as I am sure you never can I will give you as many more but till the old Scores are discounted there is no need of a new Reckoning and as you love your selves be advised never to call for any And now you see upon what reason I demanded signal Marks it was none of my own Motion but his Challenge though without that it had been pertinent and ingenuous enough unless they would learn more sober Principles However I had never taken any notice of his former Blasphemies had I not been driven to it by his own Impudence I was not so disingenuous as to object his or any mans personal Miscarriages to the disparagement of a publick Cause though you have raked up the faults as you suppose them of several particular Members of the Church of
you have order'd the matter was enacted purely in favour of himself and his own Party You have brought things to that pass that were it not for that you might erect a new Court of Justice and hang them all for any thing they have to plead in their own defence For as you tell the story they are the only guilty persons in reference to the late Rebellion Your Charge against his Royal Father is the very same with the Inditement that was peferred against him both by and before the high Court of Justice only the manner of your Expressions is suited to the alteration of time and circumstances But he fought against a Cause that was only too good to be fought for he began a War against the Religion and the Liberty of his Subjects and forced them to take upArms in their own defence against Tyranny and Arbitrary Government for so you would have called it had you written in those happy days though now the word is Sibthorpianism i. e. as you describe it an endeavour to invade his Subjects Proprieties and subvert the Fundamental Laws and for that Cause only involve his Kingdoms in a long and bloody War And though he were sworn to maintain all the Ancient Constitutions of the Realm yet he deformed his whole Reign with indefatigable pains to destroy them and when he perceived that he could obtein his wicked and tyrannical Ends no other way he pursued them through all parts of his Dominions with Blood and Violence and at last upon this Rock ruined himself and his Kingdoms So that all the mischiefs of the late War are to be scored purely upon his head but as for all those that took up Arms against him their Cause was so over-just and warrantable that it was only too good to have been fought for And now what could you have said worse of the worst Prince that ever wielded Sceptre than what you have here said of the very best However this methinks is but an odd way of ensuring the good Behaviour of the Non-conformists for the time to come when you stand upon the Justification of their Innocence for the time past And it shews you to be a man of Judgment whilest you have so little Wit as to appeal to their former Practices as a sufficient Security of their future Peaceableness and by their harmlesness poor Lambs in reference to the late War encourage us to trust to their good Nature and Modesty for ever For if they were so innocent as to that Rebellion saving that they fought for a Cause only too good to have been fought for they are safe enough from ever fighting for any Cause too bad to be fought for And yet I shrewdly suspect we owe this very declaration of the Causes being too good to be fought for rather to your Cowardize than your Loyalty for it seems you think all Causes cost too dear when they are bought with danger or blood and though both their Religion and their Liberty were invaded you would have advised them rather than fight to let them both go And as little as you would have fought for the Good old Cause you would have fought much less for his Majesties Restauration in that it was forsooth to do it self without our Officiousness you had not leased if you had said against it too However his Majesty for any thing you would have had done for him might have been beyond Sea still unless God would have been pleased to have restored him by miracle and have march'd before him as he did before the Camp of Israel and rain'd down fire from Heaven upon the Rump and all their Adherents For men ought to have trusted God and not have taken the Work out of his hands by their own Officiousness he knows how to bring all things about in their best and proper time And these are pretty good evidences of your good-will to his Majesties Government First in that you scarce commend any thing of it since his Return beside the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion and then secondly in that you are so much concern'd to disclaim the Merits of those Persons that were Actors and Instruments in it by denying the Efficacy of any humane means towards bringing it to pass and casting it intirely upon the immediate Care of divine Providence So that if it were to do again you would advise his Subjects to forbear all endeavours of his Restauration and leave it to be brought to pass by the Providence of God or suffer it to do it self without their Officiousness We understand you But now have you not made an admirable Apology for the Loyalty of the Non-conformists by denying that they can possibly be ever guilty of any such thing as Rebellion for if the late War were none it is certain there never was nor will be any and I think upon this supposition and upon this alone we may pronounce them both innocent and secure as to this Crime But thus we see that whenever the Cause of Non-conformity appears at top the Good old Cause ever did and ever will lye at bottom or as your self express it if it were a War of Religion i. e. Fanaticism at top it was a War of Liberty i. e. a Commonwealth at bottom That is your old and your new Cause and you sink into it with the dexterity of fat Sir John Falstaff In a word it is your close and comfortable Importance And now after all your kind and courtly Expressions almost in every page towards the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity and on the contrary rating me for shewing no more respect to it than to remember some old stories in despite of its Authority and lastly commanding me to let all those things of former times alone and mind my own business You your self have not made bold with it at all by reviving the Adventures of Sibthorp and Manwaring and raking into all the Deformities of the late King 's whole Reign and transcribing a long History out of a certain long Gazette of the true Cause and Original as you dream of the Rebellion So that we now perceive your meaning in all this idle noise about the Act of Oblivion is to limit the Remembrance of the late War to such occurrences as you think may be of advantage to such as acted in and for the Rebellion but as for the suffering and loyal Party they must be obliged and conjured to seal up their Lips and smother their Resentments however if I had been profane or disingenuous in offending against the sacred Act of Oblivion I am sure you have out-gone me have done that and more For that looks back no farther than the year 37. but yet there are some old Sibthorpian Gentlemen still alive that might possibly have had an hand in carrying on Impositions of money in the late Kings time and thereby contributing not a little to our late Wars now these men are still obnoxious to Justice for all their
former Times and the present transactions to regulate himself by in every Circumstance Though yet here methinks you shew more kindness to the Prerogative of School-masters than to that of Kings in that you address your advice of Peace and Condescension as well to the Subject as the Sovereign whereas in your former Admonitions you applied your self and your sage discourses of Moderation to the Government alone without the least intimation of advice to Subjects to beware of peevishness and incivility to their Superiours However it is to be hoped that Schoolmasters will hereafter lay aside their Rods and their Ferula's to avoid these implacable Grudges of juvenile Petulancy and learn by the Example of their brother Kings to condescend to their Boys for peace sake and the quiet of Boykind and upon all occasions to give them good words and humour them like Children and from all these fatal consequences of whipping which can only serve as sea marks unto wise Schoolmasters to avoid the causes And never hereafter to brandish their Rods against Truants Loiterers and Rob-orehards remembring the implacable Ballads of Tom Triplet the stabbing of the Roman Emperor the Tai-Ior-Parliament of Poland the danger of Alexander the King of Spain's progress into Biscai the Resignation of the Queen of Sweden the Revolts of Switzerland and the Low-countreys and an hundred more that I could tell you but idle stories and yet Kings and Schoolmasters can tell how to make use of them for where there is so great a resemblance in the Effects there must be some parallel in the Causes You have put Tacitus his nose out of joint for sententious Politicks But above all it concerns them to consider that God has instated them in the Government of their Subjects with that incumbrance of Reason and that incumbrance upon reason of Conscience as if Conscience were an incumbrance upon Reason and Reason upon Government Men therefore are to be dealt with reasonably and consciencious men by conscience And then that the Body is in the power of the Mind so that corporal Punishments do never reach the Offender but the innocent suffers for the guilty And the mind is in the hand of God and cannot correct those perswasions which upon the best of its natural Capacity it has collected and therefore to punish that is to violate the divine Majesty To what purpose is it to scourge the outward Boy your corporal punishments never reach the Offender but the innocent suffers for the guilty it is the mind that is the truant and the dunce and if that will not con its Lesson is it justice that the poor innocent Backside should do penance for anothers sloth and idleness It is only for implacable Divines to be thus cruel and sanguinary And then as for the Mind that is in the hand of God and cannot correct those false Concords and unlucky Tricks which upon the best of its natural Capacity it has collected so that to punish that is to violate the divine Majesty And now lay by your Rods my Masters break your Ferula's burn your Grammars tear in pieces your Dictionaries and your construing Books mure up your School-doors leave your declining of Nouns and Verbs construe no more Greek and Latin break up School and keep an universal Play-day throughout the whole Nation for Truants must not be whipt and if you attempt to take down their Breeches you offer plain violence to the Laws of Nature and of God For he has put their Bodies into the Power of their Minds and their minds he keeps in his own hands and therefore if you scourge them you do not only punish the Innocent for the Guilty which no sort of men are so brutish to do beside the Clergy but the disgrace and the blame of all lights at last upon the divine Majesty in that the Mind is wholly in his hands and all its Actions whatsoever must be entitled to his Providence A blessed Account of Government this but yet such as is absolutely necessary to the exemption of Conscience from the Commands of Authority by ascribing all the Extravagancies of Mankind to the Will of God that has put upon them a fatal Necessity to do whatever they do And then 't is in vain for the Civil Magistrate to think of forcing his Subjects to Obedience by Penalties when they are over-ruled to the contrary by an almighty and irresistible Power This is a fit Cover for so foul a Cause But now if you had come to me I could have told you an hundred more idle stories that you and Kings and School-masters would know how to make use of that would better have filled up your Politick Lectures and done more advantage both to your cause and your self than all that you have rak'd together I will recommend but one to you in which I am sure the King and Parliament the three Kingdoms with the Isles adjacent together with all the Plantations that lie out of hearing are more nearly concerned than in any of your Politick Tales not excepting the Queens own Broad-seal and to make you expect no longer it is the famous story of Massanello And if ever you come to be a Parliament-man because you may be modest at first and fearful of speaking I care not if I lend you a Speech before I conclude And thus you must manage it and your self First you must rise up and take out you Gold-watch if it be not at pawn for the Picquet disaster and though it do not go or be down yet look on 't in the first place however not transiently but stay your Eye upon it till you cannot longer do it handsomly without too apparent Prostitution of your design than combing your Wigg shake it with a Grace make up your Mouth betwixt a smile and a simper look upon the Presence with some Pity but more scorn And then begin Mr. Speaker and there pause again for it becomes you to seem modest at first and so after a frown or two more with your mouth and as many smiles with your Forehead procede in good earnest without any more faces and prefaces to be wail the evil the fatal the sad Consequences the mischiefs many and great that threaten the Kingdom 's ruine and turning it to a Common-wealth again by the Apple-mongers and old Women in the Strand Charing-cross and all along by White-hall as far as Westminster in the Face of the Street and all By-standers selling and exposing to sale from day to day whole baskets full of Pippins Paremains Russettings and old Apple Johns Whereas one sturdy Swiss for I am sure he will run in your head and here you must beg Mr. Speakers pardon and correct your self and say you meant one sturdy Fisher-boy and that you must observe for a certain Rule though you are out never so much yet for all that still to go on I say Mr. Speaker one sturdy Fisher-boy by that fatal occasion of over-turning an Apple-womans basket over-turn'd all
Naples his name was Massanello and the story is true And though Mr. Speaker you may at first think it but an idle story yet all circumstances duly weighed it may some time or other prove of fatal and dangerous consequence to the Common-wealth There is Mr. Speaker beside Punchanello's Audience a great concourse of Boys whipping Giggs and of Lacqueys playing at the wheel of Fortune as I my self have often remarqued or if you will not relye upon my single observation my Lord Chief Justice and Sir Edmond Godfrey are able to inform you Now Mr. Speaker beside what may ordinarily happen at any time in scuffles between the Boys or the Lacqueys or the Porters it may so fall out that some pleasant and humorous Gentleman one of the Cock-wits of the town as he is passing on by Charing-Cross to White-hall either for the intrinsick wit of the frolick it self or to make a noise by boasting the adventure in the privy Gallery should either by himself or the officious Ministry of his Foot-boy over-turn a whole Settle of Apple-baskets that must of necessity make a scramble a scramble a scuffle a scuffle a tumult and then that may lightly come to pelting of Apples and that to tumbling in the kennel and that to bloody noses and then be sure Mr. Speaker hell is broke loose as I have observed in my Book of Aphoisms and Similitudes when the Scots enter'd England upon as slight a Cause viz. to fight for the Jure Divino of throwing Cricket-stools at Divine Service And what follow'd thereupon is yet within the compass of most mens memories Mr. Speaker I would not willingly be such a sool as to make a dangerous similitude that has no foundation for every similitude must have if not all yet some likeness That is to say for it will be sometimes requisite for so deep a States-man as you to explain your self there is no likeness without some likeness But this Mr. Speaker I am sure of that War was begun by the Women and Children and Servants of Edinburgh as you may see in the first Remonstrance presented in their names to the Lord Chancellour of Scotland And so if it should happen upon this occasion at Charing-Cross that any Massanello and believe me Mr. Speaker all Kingdoms are full of Massanello's should head the Tumult what else can lightly be expected but that they should either betake themselves to White-hall and there revile the King to his face for requiring things impossible unnecessary or wanton of his people for not considering the Laws and Customes under which they have been formerly bred as when under the Long-Parliament the Rump and Committee of Safety they had the Priviledge of raising Tumults against their Governours for not giving them good words upon all occasions and humouring them like Children for not being so civil as to condescend to their infirmities and if at any time they have got a cold forcing them to be cover'd in brief for not observing the constitution of their bodies and the antipathy of their stomachs But if they shall pass by White-hall as Mr. Speaker no body knows the motions of Tumults then what can be expected but that they should immediately to Westminster one and all and so beset this House and offer violence to the Members for being so foolishly trinkled and burthening the Subject with such a superfetation of Acts. And therefore Mr. Speaker to be short my humble motion is c. But here you know how to go on by your self it is only to move and desire the House for a quarter of an hour together by repeating the same Premises all over again that neither Apples nor Pears nor Nuts nor any other incentives of scrambling may be sold between Charing-Cross and Westminster-hall for fear of Massanello's and sturdy Swisses Do but speak it confidently and with a good Grace and then I am sure the Speech it self deserves more regard and is of closer importance to the King Parliament and Government than all your idle stories from Alexander the Great down to the Great King Gill. I am content if you will keep your own counsel you should have the honour of the Motion and I doubt not but it will be thought so serviceable to the Common-wealth that if your Effigies be not set up in the next Nich to King James in the Royal Exchange yet you can never fail of having your Statue erected among the foremost of the Dirt-basket-Justices And now I have done and hope by this time you perceive that though one night may make some men gray yet threescore years cannot make others wise And therefore I would advise you to meddle no more with Ecclesiastical Polities for I plainly perceive that Divinity is a Trade that God be thanked you are not of And that truly the reason why God does not bless you in tampering with matters of Religion is both because he never intended you for that employment or if he did you have neglected to fit your self for it by Education So that if you must be scribling betake your self to your own proper trade of Lampoons and Ballads and be not so unadvised as to talk in publique of such matters as are above the reach of your understanding you cannot touch Sacred things without prophaning them To conclude though it was the Opinion of most wise men that there was nothing more needful to answer your Libel than only to desire the world to compare it with my Discourses yet others who overpowr'd me to this Reply against the bent of my own inclinations thought it expedient that I should lay you thus open though it were only to let those weak People that once seem'd to admire and applaud you know that they had so little judgement as to approve the most despicable Trifler that was ever guilty of ink-shed And as for what concerns your self I shall say no more than to assure you that if you will learn modesty by this Correction and so give over Transprosing and the Good Old Cause you shall ever hereafter find me as much your friend as ever heretofore But as for my Reply I fear it not for if you will keep to the Reason of the Argument I know You and all your Party cannot answer and if you will play the fool again that will not serve your turn a second time the very people that once magnified your Wit now laugh at the silliness of your Pamphlet At least I think I have so sufficiently chastised your folly that if you should be so rash as to continue troublesome there will be no need of a second Correction you will be laught at and scorn'd enough without being exposed by any beside your self However I have something else to do than to write a Book against every ignorant and conceited man that has nothing else to do than to throw out his impertinent scrible against me And therefore I shall only desire you to recommend me to all your Friends at Charing-Cross and in Lincolns-inn-fields and so bid you heartily farewell FINIS The Printer to the Reader Reader Thou art desired to pardon those few faults that have escaped the Press by reason the Authour had not the Revising of the sheets Pag. 198. Pag. 96. Pag. 98. Pag. 4. Pag. 107. Pag. 206. Conq. of Granada Pag. 140. Pag. 110. Pag. 111. Pag. 143. Pag. 143. Pag. 276. Pag. 200. Pag. 252. of J. O. pag. 113. Pag. 118. Pag. 117. Ibid. Pag. 322. Def. Pag. 335. Truth and Innoc. vindic Pag. 104. pag. 76. pag. 119. Pag Pag. 119. Pag. 123. Pag. 254. Pag. 295. Pag. 296. Pag. 240. Pag. 124. Pag. 151. Pag. 151. Pag. 128. Pag. 130. Ibid. Pag. 131. Pag. 132. Pag. 218. Ibid. Pag. 30. Pag. 247. Pag. 160. Pag. 184. Pag. 50. Pag. 133. pag. 193. Pag. 251. Pag. 244. Pag. 34. Pag. 232. Pag. 230. Pag. 164. Pag. 219. Pag. 251. Pag. 120. Expos. on 130. Psal. Pag. 275. Pag. 198. Pag. 197. Pag. 18. Pag. 309. Pag. 43. Pag. 29. Pag. 27. Pag. 281. Pag. 166. Pag. 320. Pag. 278. Pag. 264. Pag. 144. Vid. vit Joan. Calvini Vid. Epist. Calv. Pag. 122. Pag 277 8 9 10. Pag. 277. Pag. 218. Pag. 218. Areo pag Pag. 4. Pag. 212 Ibid. Pag. 2â—3 Pag. 210. Pag. 218. Pag. 231. Pag. 301. Pag. 230. Pag. 148. Ibid. Pag. 230. Ibid. Pag. 243. Pag. 248. Pag. 214. Pag. 320. Pag. 321. Pag. 191. Pag. 279. Pag. 263. Pag. 158. Pag. 159. Pag. 103. Pag. 139. Pag. 47. Pag. 156. Pag. 66. Pag. 61. Pag. 163. Pag. 70. Pag. 185. Pag. 28. Pag. 215. Pag. 143. pag. 209. Pag. 146. Pag. 1. Pag. 2. Pag. 11. Pag. 267. Pag. 49. Pag. 59. Pag. 71. Pag. 51 c. Pag. 55. Pag. 〈◊〉 Pag. 42 3. Pag. 44. Ibid. Pag. 266. Pag. 261. Pag. 104. Pag. 264. Pag. 265. Pag. 316. Pag. 307. Pag. 7. Pag. 170 71. Pag. 268. Pag. 282. Pag. 95. Ibid. Pag. 300. Pag. 243 Pag. 301. Pag. 301 Pag. 301. Pag. 76. Pag. 162. Pag. 105. Pag. 252. Pag. 237. Pag. 238 9 40. Pag. 270. Pag. 219. Pag. 275. The Life of A. B. Laud. Pag. 495. Pag. 302. Pag. 301. Declar. March 10. 1623. Ibid. Ibid. Rusworth's Collect. p. 418. Pag. 297. Mr. Rous his speech in the Parliam 1628. â— Rush. Collect. Pag. 646. Pag. 297. Pag. 303. Buch. Hist. Scot. l. 19. Large Declar concern the tumults in Scotland printed 1629. Ibid. Ibid Pag. 54. Pag. 280. Instit. l. 4. c. 20. §. 24. Sect. 31. Pag. 75. Surveigh p. 296. Pag. 251. Pag. 280. Pag. 251. Pag. 251. Pag. 252. Pag. 252. Pag. 252. Pag. 275. Pag. 250. Pag. 246. Pag. 303. Pag. 304. Pag. 253. Pag. 282. Pag. 240. Pag. 305. Pag. 240. Pag. 310 Pag. 275. Pag. 275. Pag. 306. Pag. 275. Sect. 5. Sect. 6. Pag. 306. Pag. 306. Pag. 282 Pag. 11. Pag. 239. Pag. 241. Pag. 249. Pag. 299. Pag. 310 Pag. 277. Pag. 237. Pag. 294. Pag. 13. Pag. 43. Pag. 46. Pag. 81. Pag. 123. Pag. 148. Pag. 219. Pag. 218. Pag. 230. Pag. 252. Pag. 268. Pag. 279. Pag. 297. Pag. 307. Pag. ult Pag. 280. Pag. 139. Pag. 242. Pag. 250. Pag. 250. Pag. 278. Pag. 318. Pag. 264. Pag. 244. Pag. 241. Pag. 244 Pag. 244 Pag. 244. Pag. 244. Pag. 245. Pag. 245. Bucan loc Commun Pag. 88. Pag. 243. Pag. 246. Pag. 87. Pag. 249. Pag. 148.